Life poems
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Alea Jacta
© Alfred Austin
Dearest, I know thee wise and good,
Beloved by all the best;
With fancy like Ithuriel's spear,
A judgment proof 'gainst rage or fear,
Heart firm through many a stormy year,
And conscience calm in rest.
Passion for Solitude
© Cesare Pavese
The night doesn’t matter. The square patch of sky
whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star
struggles in emptiness, far from all foods,
from all houses, alien. It isn’t enough for itself,
it needs too many companions. Here in the dark, alone,
my body is calm, it feels it’s in charge.
Wild With All Regrets
© Wilfred Owen
Which I shan't manage now. Unless it's yours.
I shall stay in you, friend, for some few hours.
You'll feel my heavy spirit chill your chest,
And climb your throat on sobs, until it's chased
On sighs, and wiped from off your lips by wind.
A Winter Daybreak above Vence
© James Wright
The night’s drifts
Pile up below me and behind my back,
Because of this Modest Style
© Ramon Lopez Velarde
May you be blessed, modest, magnificent;
you have possessed the highest summit of my heart,
you who are at once the artist
of lowly and most lofty things, who bear in your hands
my life as if it was your work of art!
Thou Art My Lute
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Thou art my lute, by thee I sing,—
My being is attuned to thee.
Golden State
© Frank Bidart
I
To see my father
lying in pink velvet, a rosary
twined around his hands, rouged,
Sonnet II
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
I FEAR thee not, O Death! nay oft I pine
To clasp thy passionless bosom to mine own,
And on thy heart sob out my latest moan,
Ere lapped and lost in thy strange sleep divine;
Far Away
© Rubén Dario
Ox that I saw in my childhood, as you steamed
in the burning gold on the Nicaraguan sun,
there on the rich plantation filled with tropical
harmonies; woodland dove, of the woods that sang
with the sound of the wind, of axes, of birds and wild bulls:
I salute you both, because you are both my life.
Exultation
© Emma Lazarus
BEHOLD, I walked abroad at early morning,
The fields of June were bathed in dew and lustre,
The hills were clad with light as with a garment.
After Thomas Kempis
© George MacDonald
Who follows Jesus shall not walk
In darksome road with danger rife;
But in his heart the Truth will talk,
And on his way will shine the Life.
Bindweed by James McKean: American Life in Poetry #62 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Gardeners who've fought Creeping Charlie and other unwanted plants may sympathize with James McKean from Iowa as he takes on Bindweed, a cousin to the two varieties of morning glory that appear in the poem. It's an endless struggle, and in the end, of course, the bindweed wins.
from [Eve Describes Her Creation] from Paradise Lost, Book 4
© Patrick Kavanagh
That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awak’d and found myself repos’d,
The Spirit Of The Snow
© Denis Florence MacCarthy
The night brings forth the morn-
Of the cloud is lightning born;
From out the darkest earth the brightest roses grow.
Bright sparks from black flints fly,
And from out a leaden sky
Comes the silvery-footed Spirit of the Snow.
To a Gentleman and Lady on the Death of the Lady's Brother and Sister, and a Child of the Name Avis, Aged One Year
© Phillis Wheatley
But, Madam, let your grief be laid aside,
And let the fountain of your tears be dry'd,
In vain they flow to wet the dusty plain,
Your sighs are wafted to the skies in vain,
Your pains they witness, but they can no more,
While Death reigns tyrant o'er this mortal shore.
Fate
© George MacDonald
Oft, as I rest in quiet peace, am I
Thrust out at sudden doors, and madly driven
